A mistress of comic anguish

Ever since her first play, The Memory Of Water (1996), Shelagh Stephenson, who studied drama at Manchester university before becoming a full-time writer, has been labelled "the mistress of comic anguish".

Ever since her first play, The Memory Of Water (1996), Shelagh Stephenson, who studied drama at Manchester university before becoming a full-time writer, has been labelled "the mistress of comic anguish".

Frankly, it's not a description she particularly cares for, even if the play is being revived at the Library Theatre.

"To be honest, I never thought it was that good a play," she admits with disarming candour. "But I'm not that good a judge of my own material. I can only ever see the flaws in it, which is one of the reasons I hardly ever go to see productions after they've premiered.

"You've got to think of your plays as children who've grown up and gone off and lived another life somewhere else," she says of The Memory Of Water, which has, in fact, just been filmed, starring Julie Walters, by Lewis Gilbert, the man who also transformed Shirley Valentine into a big-screen hit.

"I know it's not a bad play - but I just don't understand how it affects people in quite the way it seems to. Not that I mind," she hastily adds.

She's also anxious to dispel any notion that the play, or her work, is autobiographical. It's an annoying assumption that's only been encouraged by her admission in an early interview that the bitter-sweet play, in which three sisters return to their family home on the eve of the funeral of their mother, had originally been set at a family birthday party but that she had changed it when her mother died during the writing.

She did say that to an interviewer, she agrees, but contends that it was somewhat misunderstood at the time and has subsequently been blown out of all proportion.

"Of course, events in your own life and things that happen to your friends affect your writing, but I was already in the process of thinking about changing the original setting, anyway," she argues.

"When people start talking about recurring themes or any of that stuff I have to tell them not to be so silly. Although I will admit that, if I do have a recurring theme, it would have to be death. Yes, there's usually a death in there somewhere," she cheerfully concedes.